Star Wars Episode VIII or not to star wars?

[Jailyn]

I am so seeing it the first showing when it it comes out in a couple weeks. so who is with me? I know many feel strongly. My ex hated star wars. She only like episode II because Princess Amadala has the pretty dresses. I was like but, it's a nerdy movie with a story. You don't have to say you are a huge fan if you don't want to, but who is seeing it?

[Angela Drakken]

I am so seeing it the first showing when it it comes out in a couple weeks. so who is with me? I know many feel strongly. My ex hated star wars. She only like episode II because Princess Amadala has the pretty dresses. I was like but, it's a nerdy movie with a story. You don't have to say you are a huge fan if you don't want to, but who is seeing it?

I am seeing it openning night in my Kylo Ren cosplay. Dont judge me. XP

Sent from my LG-H812 using Tapatalk

[Siobhan Amanda]

I am so seeing it the first showing when it it comes out in a couple weeks. so who is with me? I know many feel strongly. My ex hated star wars. She only like episode II because Princess Amadala has the pretty dresses. I was like but, it's a nerdy movie with a story. You don't have to say you are a huge fan if you don't want to, but who is seeing it?

Blimey! Your ex, hated Star Wars? Did you point out that hatred can only lead to the dark side. I'm with you I can't wait!
Siobhan

[Roll]

I and my step brother want to see it the preview night but I have a suspicion we will be guilt tripped into waiting a few days for family to get into town to make an event of it.

[Artesia]

The plan is to watch it opening night.  My soon to be ex-wife is ecstatic because now she doesn't have to go with me.  Her direct quote "I don't have to go watch it, because that's her job now".  My girlfriend wants to watch all the episodes leading up to the new movie before we go see it.  Could you imagine the tears I cried in having that thrust upon me.  I mean, who wants to watch a Star Wars marathon? 

Seriously though, going to go right after watching approximately 12 hours of Star Wars!  AKA Nerd party at my girlfriends place!

[Kylo]

I saw it the day after it opened here in UK, didn't want to deal with release day crowds.

As a lifelong fan of the OT I guess these sequels aren't too bad. I'm glad they decided to leave anything to do with the prequels in the dust. VIII isn't a perfect movie but it's fun.

[Roll]

VIII isn't a perfect movie but it's fun.

Honestly, I had a lot of issues with 8. It wasn't bad as a movie, just... not great for Star Wars? Really it's that I agree with Mark Hamill's criticism above all else. All of the new characters were handled well (I absolutely loved Benicio Del Toro's character), but the original cast was... not so hot for me. Despite actually preferring the "new" humor, and even loving Chewbacca's shameless plush toy marketing bird friends, pretty much everything to do with Leia, particularly the one notorious scene super-Leia scene, and Luke's characterization just bothered me. Even the "cameo" by another classic character (I'm being vague just in case people haven't seen it ) just felt like completely unnecessary pandering to me, and the blending of the effects could have been done better. Toss in what I felt were a few severely flawed plot elements (which I'm trying to withhold judgment on to see if they are addressed in episode 9), and it all adds up to a movie that, while enjoyable, I can't help but rank alongside the prequels in overall quality.

(My ranking best to worst: 5, 4, 7, 6, 2 + 8 tied, 3, 1. ... And yes, 2 is a bit higher for me than most people just for the Jango-Obiwan fight alone. I loved watching a someone wipe the floor with a Jedi in the same way I love stuff where Batman kicks Superman around a little. )

[V M]

I was supposed to go see it with a friend but they decided to d-out and went with someone else, oh well maybe I'm better off

[Laurie]

meh I'll pass and see it when it comes on TV if I am still around then. I almost never go to a theater. And only when I am going with someone.

[Jessica]

Spoiler alert!!!





I was thrilled that the women (excluding Phasma) were the heroines and the men were doofuses or evil.  Even the evil guys were doofuses.  Snokes thought he knew it all, where did that get him?  Po thought he knew it all, he just about got everyone killed. 
But why let Leia survive the vacuum of space?

[Roll]

(SPOILERS CONTINUED)




That Leia scene was just... ugh. Pretty much the most powerful use of the force shown to date, and it was the person who has never had any evidence of training or anything? I really don't know what they were thinking. I genuinely hated that scene more than about any scene in any movie in recent memory. The initial emotional impact was huge, and I thought it was a bold and startling choice, that really brought emotional weight to everything. Then... nope! Also, Phasma's "death redux" was maddening. She is the Boba Fett of the new trilogy, a potentially amazing and interesting, unique character that is just handled entirely unceremoniously after a huge build up. Unless they bring her back off screen again, then she's just Kenny from South Park and at that point it's just stupid.

[Jessica]

(SPOILERS CONTINUED)




That Leia scene was just... ugh. Pretty much the most powerful use of the force shown to date, and it was the person who has never had any evidence of training or anything? I really don't know what they were thinking. I genuinely hated that scene more than about any scene in any movie in recent memory. The initial emotional impact was huge, and I thought it was a bold and startling choice, that really brought emotional weight to everything. Then... nope! Also, Phasma's "death redux" was maddening. She is the Boba Fett of the new trilogy, a potentially amazing and interesting, unique character that is just handled entirely unceremoniously after a huge build up. Unless they bring her back off screen again, then she's just Kenny from South Park and at that point it's just stupid.

What I don't get about Leia is, Carrie Fisher is dead, they can't bring her back like Kenny.
I get that about Phasma!

[Roll]

What I don't get about Leia is, Carrie Fisher is dead, they can't bring her back like Kenny.
I get that about Phasma!

I feel like they missed a few easy rewrites to give Leia a noble send off after Fisher's death. Now it's just... awkward.

[Laurie]

(Yawn)

Can't you two keep the noise down I'm trying to sleep here

[Jessica]

Have you noticed when Rey swings a light saber it goes "womb, womb, womb"

[Kylo]

SPOILERS




Carrie's space scene is weird, but I figure, she has to have some abilities with the force since she passed them on to her apparently exceptionally force-powerful kid, and we'd never really seen her make major use of them. So I get why that's in there.

Phasma seemed to have been built up as a character since TFA by Christie and the designers, but with no real payoff, other than that she's really evil. There's supposed to be a deleted scene in which Phasma murders a bunch of fellow stormtroopers who knew she'd been chucked into the garbage in TFA, so that they would never reveal she'd been the one who turned Starkiller's shield off. So I'm not really sure why Christie was saying Phasma was some sort of relate-able role model in TFA interviews, lulz. Maybe they originally had some sort of development planned for her character back then, but canned it. Neat fight, though.

I also liked the fact that Rey was way too confident in her ability to pull off her plan on the Supremacy. Up until now she'd been a little too perfect and pure a character, and she needed some ideological failure, just as Luke had his in the cave, in order to grow/learn from it.   

[Sarah_P]

**********SPOILER ALERT*************

I'm going to say something that I'm sure will be unpopular, but i LOVED Last Jedi. I truly think it's one of the best Star Wars movies of all time. The only thing I had a problem with was the jaunt to the casino. It just didn't make a whole lot of sense, even if it was necessary to establish a character or 3. The movie takes all your expectations going in, all the fan theories, and dumps them on their head, which is brilliant.
When Lucas was ruining (ahem, running) everything, he wanted everything to revolve around the movie characters, and especially the Skywalker bloodline. Why is this small group of people the only ones that can make a difference in an entire galaxy? Now everyone is free to be a hero, as Rei (what with her revealed background) and the little boy at the end shows us.

I do agree about Phasma though. If you read the book, she's really not a good person in the slightest way whatsoever. They really do seem to be trying to re-create a Boba Fett thing with her, even though she's had more establishment, personality, and story in the movies alone than Boba ever had in the OT.

Just a bit of background, I have read literally EVERY single Star Wars novel released to date. I've read synopsis of the games I hadn't played, and synopsis of many of the comics. I was not at all upset by Disney excluding all this from cannon since, while there were some great stories in there (mostly Zahn & Stackpole's books), the overall EU was a complete mess.

In the EU, Leia didn't really learn the force until she was 65. That was ridiculous. Obviously she would have been Luke's first student! So her display of force powers was perfectly natural, and really, what she did was not that powerful of a display as some of the things Obi-wan did in Revenge of the Sith. It also was pretty low-key compared to things they did in the EU (even excluding the ridiculous & terrible Force Unleashed games).

Actually, what Luke does in Last Jedi is probably the most powerful use of the Force ever done (even INCLUDING tossing around Star Destroyers), so it's no wonder it killed him.

A friend & I were discussing this the other day, and we both agree that Kylo / Ben is actually a far better written Jacen Solo. Like, Jacen was a rough draft & Kylo is the finished version. His journey to the dark side is infinitely more understandable than Jacen's was.

[Roll]

All else aside, it does sadden me this movie has been so divisive even accounting for the trolling and the total BS complaints. :/

I agree about the Skywalker bloodline fully. I was so happy they did what they did with Rey's parentage. Ive been arguing against the luke's daughter theory for the past two years. Most "great" people did not have "great" parents, and the bloodline/ancestry focus in so much fantasy has always irked me. Particularly considering with Star Wars even Anakin came from "nothing", so the precedence was just not there for the whole family dynastic conflict angle.

Though the Leia thing I do think is still the most powerful well known use (ie: not including some EU depictions I may be unaware of, but actually including stuff like Starkiller's throwing around star destroyers) simply because it basically just stopped what should have been an instantaneous death outright. Manipulation of physical objects at even large scale(lowercase f force, momentum, etc.) seems like it would be a step below what had to amount to molecular level control of her body. If she had protected herself physically in some way beforehand, it would have worked better for me (prevention being easier in general), but the whole retroactive "eyes pop open" thing is what ultimately killed it for me. Which was only done because they wanted to milk the drama for a moment longer. Actually, that was my bigger complaint, looking at it from a film making perspective. It was such a dramatic tease that they just yanked back in an attempt to get the best of both worlds("OH GOD SHES DEAD!" .... "YAY SHES BACK!"). I just don't think that ever works as a narrative device and cheapens the movie for attempting it. Star Wars wise, it also seemed out of place that she would apparently fight so hard to hold onto that existence when there is a definitively established higher plane of existence. It made it feel almost cowardly character wise, like she was so afraid of death she did something like that, when every other Jedi meets their end stoically and sometimes willingly. And while it definitely makes sense Luke would train her, I feel like they really needed to address it somehow. A single scene with her throwing someone around or a casual "when luke trained me..." line would have made a world of difference.

Sorry, don't mean to rant about that scene too much, I just really had issues with it.

Also fully agree on Kylo > Jacen. Even when people criticized him in TFA, I thought he was extremely well done. The things people were critical of are the very things they were supposed to be critical of. He does spoiled emo kid ruled by fear and tantrums better than prequel Anakin ever did, and he's a great character for it. He comes across as walking bundle of insecurity and uncertainty, which is also a far more realistic feeling take on the shift to the dark side that the switch flipped "welp, I'm evil now" version.

[Sarah_P]

Star Wars wise, it also seemed out of place that she would apparently fight so hard to hold onto that existence when there is a definitively established higher plane of existence. It made it feel almost cowardly character wise, like she was so afraid of death she did something like that, when every other Jedi meets their end stoically and sometimes willingly.

See, I see her choosing to live because of the cause. The Resistance needed her, her people needed her. The younguns weren't ready just yet to take over.

Oh, and the one other thing about the casino trip: I was really expecting the person they were going there to look for was going to be Lando.

[Roll]

Oh, and the one other thing about the casino trip: I was really expecting the person they were going there to look for was going to be Lando.

Yeah, I leaned over to my step brother and said "this better be Lando".

Mostly because this: http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/weekend-update-segment---billy-dee-williams/n11239?snl=1